A strange kind of snow has been falling here almost constantly for three days now. At first tiny flakes came down, frozen so solidly they made a sound when they hit an exposed hard surface, like wood or the arms of my deck chair, even the fabric of my Carhartts coveralls. Tick, tick tick … Later in the week still small but softer, they landed without a sound. At first it was crystallin and showed the patterns usually associated with regular snow, later the patterns showed but sort of melted somehow, softer. So far we’ve had maybe six inches covering a firmer level of packed snow with a light fluffy comforter. I get most of my water from thawing snow. I have a couple of 5-gallon stainless steel pots for that purpose. Generally if I pack one full the first time it melts to between a third and a half and then I fill it again and that tops it off. I’ve made five trips out into this snow, packed it as tightly as I can and I still don’t have even have half a kettle-full.
I’m not the only one bothered by this unusual snow, either. Normally the chickadees who weigh only a couple of ounces land on the surface and hop around on it with no problem. Today I watched one land and immediately sink up to its neck. For a moment while it struggled, I thought I was going to have to go to the rescue, But, with a lot of major panicked wing flapping it managed to swim back to the surface until it had enough space between its wings and the snow to sort of leap up and fly away. Can you imagine a world covered in something you can’t even stand on?
The only break I saw came last evening when with no wind, some larger flakes came down, though they were so light with nothing to push them, they floated in odd directions, not always down, just sort of drifted around aimlessly.
Supposedly Americans Native to the Arctic have 40-some words for snow. Over the years as I’ve observed the weather I’ve noticed different kinds of snow, doubtful it was 40, though, and wondered what the Native word for that one is. This snow was different from any I’ve seen before. Forty-one?
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